Psalms Lesson 12

Psalm 28:5-9

Next week we’ll start a whole new category, a different kind of Psalm. I want to finish Psalm 28 and then work on summarizing what we’ve learned from these individual lament Psalms. Last time we said that Psalm 28 can be divided into three parts; verses 1-4 is an address to Jehovah or address to Yahweh, David’s petition upon the wicked lest he die with them; verses 5-8 was an address to the congregation, David prophesies the future destruction of the wicked and recounts his personal blessing, and then verse 9 was a petition back to Yahweh; David petitions for eternal salvation to Israel.

We left off at verse 5 which was the first one of this second section, we said that verse 5 is different from the first four verses because of what? Remember what we said was different as you read verses 1-4, something shifts when you come to verse 5. It shifts, in other words, verses 1-4 is all addressed to the Lord, and then verse 5 is addressed to the congregation about the Lord. [5] “Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of His hands, He shall destroy them and not build them up.” Now verse 5 actually speaks in our generation of fallen man and it goes back to a fundamental problem of God-consciousness; it’s outlined in Romans 1:18. Sometimes it is said that is there such a thing as a man who is neutral, in the sense that the man has no information. In other words, there’s just no information one way or the other, and so the man in that case would be neutral. Well, that doesn’t fit Paul’s point in Romans 1; Paul would argue that once a person reaches God-consciousness there can be no neutrality because of the problem of common grace. Paul would argue that God’s plan is, in elementary form, and by that it appears to mean His existence, some of God’s attributes, man’s position in creation, these things are clear from the creation, so that no man can ever say that I didn’t have any information about God’s existence or about my moral obligation to that God.

The implications of this are titanic and now is not the time that we can deal with all the implications, but the implications, just to show you in outline form of this affect, the implications mean that there is no neutral area of human endeavor known to man, that all thought is either God-submitting or God-hating, and this involves every academic discipline and every academic theory that is ever put forward, any personal attitude in the home or anywhere else, there is always either divine viewpoint in which we submit to God’s will or human viewpoint in which man decrees he will direct his own system independent of divine revelation. And this the God-hating attitude that is mentioned here, “They regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of His hands;” and so therefore, “He shall destroy them, and not build them up.”

The implications of this view is, one of the implications is that in dealing with proving God’s existence, many of you have taken philosophy and gone over the classic proofs of the existence of God, in proving God’s existence there is no proof for God’s existence in the final analysis because men already know He’s there. The question only is how to rationally elucidate what you already know. God’s Word says that Gods existence is known to man, it does not need to be proved, and here’s why. There is no way to prove it because the category G-o-d would be an unknown category, it can’t be identified unless man already from birth has an innate understanding of what G-o-d is. So therefore Paul argues, and never argues actually, that the creation proves God’s existence. It’s just saying the creation tells us things about God.

The Bible never deals with a proof for God’s existence; the implication we draw is that it’s not necessary because all men do know. What is some evidence that all men do know that God is there? The evidence is that all thought is either idolatrous or godly in the sense that every system of thought has a god, with a little “g.” We’re finishing up the second pamphlet that will deal with Genesis 1-11 and one of the things I show in this pamphlet is that the modern theory of evolution is an idolatrous theory and it’s very amusing to read people who think all neutral and very highly objective, and we keep God out of this, and so on. No, God’s thoroughly involved in it; it’s an idolatry, and any system of thought is an idolatry. Something has to be idolized in man’s mind to act as an anchor for all those other thoughts. To think coherently all of your thoughts have to be glued onto some structure and that structure is the idol. So it is impossible for man to rationally think without either having God or an idol. Man is not free to go without God, he is only free to pick which God/god he wants, but he can’t go without any whatever. And that’s something to remember always, and this is the weight and burden of God’s Word, that all men have gods of one sort or another. The tragic thing in our own generation is that the gods remain unidentified because we persist in describing them in pseudo-scientific vocabularies.

But verse 5 would be directed toward people in our own generation if David were here, who claim that God is not there, that we must study things neutrally and objectively. As Cornelius VanTil, one of the great apologists of the Christian faith has put it, trying to scientifically study anything in an atmosphere of religious neutrality is like walking out of someone’s backyard, or walk onto someone’s property, examine all the property, the grass, the flowers, the trees, and say I cannot be concerned with the question of who owns this; it’s nonsense. We are trespassing on God’s yard whenever we are studying anything and of course we have to be cognizant of who is the owner.

So verse 5 is a damnation that David prays upon this and it’s a prophecy, it’s in a future tense, “he will destroy them, and he will not build them up.”

Then in verses 6-8 David shifts, in this praise section of the congregation, by recounting his personal blessings. And when you study his personal blessing here, since this is the last time we’ll deal with an individual lament Psalm, this category of Psalm, let’s look carefully at these three verses because they show a progression that is typical of all praise in God’s Word. Now once again I hope I don’t have to go into too much detail to cause you to remember that praise in God’s Word means a narration of His Words and His works. Praising God is not “praise the Lord, praise the Lord,” something like this that passes for it in certain Christian circles. This goes on in Christian circles; it’s rude to interrupt somebody with an “amen” or “praise the Lord,” that’s just bad manners, that’s not a sign of spirituality. But nevertheless it goes on. And it’s a foul imitation of what true praise is.

Now in these three verses you have what real praise is in the original Hebrew; this is the way the Israelites conceived of praise. “Blessed be the LORD, because He has head the voice of my supplications.” Now verse 6 in the original is directly put in opposition to verse 2; verse 6 uses the same verb, it uses the same word for supplication which means request for grace, literally, request for favor. And if you look back in verse 2 you see, “Hear the voice of my supplication,” the verb is in the imperative mood. Then when you come to verse 6 the verb is in the perfect tense, indicative mood, “Blessed be the LORD, because He has heard the voice of my supplications.” The shift then, from verse 2 where we have an imperative to verse 6 where we have an indicative in the perfect tense is a sign that we have moved from a potential request to an answered prayer.

And so verse 6 gives us the first principle of praise, and that is before you can praise God, God has to do something for you. And all praise is therefore dependent upon God actually doing something on your behalf. And so this is why he can say “Blessed is the LORD” which is a declarative statement about God’s character. Why is God blessed, “because He has heard the voice of my supplications.” You say well isn’t this rather impious, to call Him blessed just because He scratches your back, what kind of praise is this, you’re not going to praise God unless He scratches your back, is this what praise means? It means that but not in the sense that you’re think of when you make that statement. Praise of God without Him doing anything in history for you is self-hypnosis. See, you can sit back and hypnotize yourself and say oh God’s wonderful, God’s great, and all the rest of it, but if God hasn’t done something in history to prove Himself to you, how can your praise be one of faith if faith is trusting the facts of the case. So don’t you see that praise requires a historic act on your behalf.

This is why, on the modern basis, the liberal clergyman cannot praise God. In fact, if you attend a religious service in a liberal surrounding you watch how they introduce certain prayers and confessions of faith. Generally it’s been my experience, and all the time I was growing up, I grew up in a liberal situation; I’m no stranger to that kind of an environment. Generally what you will find is that they’ll introduce a praise or a prayer by saying: Let us confess together the faith of our fathers, or let us praise God and then they’ll quote some traditional church phrase. And of course what they’re really saying and very few in the congregation have ears to hear, but what he’s actually said to you, let’s go back and imitate our ancestors but let’s not really do it firsthand. It’s very clever wording, sometime if you have the opportunity you just listen carefully; there’s a little word game that’s being played and very few people catch on to the name of the game.

But here in verse 6 David is making a first person, in other words, God has done this for me and now I can say “Blessed” is God; blessed is God because He has done something. Verse 6 is the announcement, a prerequisite for all praise that God has to do something.

Verse 7 is his immediate conclusion which we have said is declarative praise. There’s two kinds of praise in God’s Word, declarative and descriptive. Declarative praise is event centered; in other words, this centers on a specific event in the life of a Psalmist. God has done something specifically for me and so he links his response to God to that event, that concrete historical event. And then the descriptive praise is one step beyond the declarative praise. The descriptive praise is where you begin to deduce propositions about God’s nature and here you begin to generalize and here you might say it’s God-centered rather than the event. It’s just a generalization of what God does and we see both these elements here in verses 7-8. Verse 7 is your declarative. Then verse 8 is more or less a descriptive praise; you start with verse 6, the event; verse 7 the event turns into praise, verse 8 the declarative praise turns into descriptive praise.

Let’s watch verse 7, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I was helped,” it’s a perfect tense, it’s past, “I was helped.” “My heart trusted in Him, and I was helped. Therefore,” then he moves on, “Therefore, my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.”

Before we get to the last part of verse 7 notice again the first part of verse 7 looks back to a concrete historical act. Now this is a very critical thing to get through your head and it’s very hard because our whole culture fights us at this very point. And that is, that we can have doctrine, all the sweet words, God words, etc. that we’re very familiar with and repeat them all over the place, and this is a comfortable vocabulary we’re used to using but it becomes divorced from history. The first place you notice this is in the Christian life and the application, where a person knows the Word but never can seem to apply it. There you have one of the end results of a process. But I think what few Christians are ever aware of is that’s the end result of a prior process, and the reason why doctrine is not better applies is because when it was learned in the first place it was never learned in connection with history; it was never learned plugged into the stream of experience. The doctrine was taught abstractly and therefore it faces in its abstract state. It’s never brought back down into the stream of daily history. This is why we’re coping with this framework series of teaching the doctrines as part and parcel of historic events so we don’t make the bifurcation.

Now what happens, of course, in all of this is that eventually we get to the place where we keep all these things, the test of accuracy of Scripture goes out the window, the Bible can have errors in it, but nevertheless I like the morals that Christianity gives, it’s nice and comforting to me to know that I should love my neighbor and my neighbor should love me, that gives me great psychological comfort, so I’ll continue to hold on to that emotional psychological use of the words whereas at the same time I’m letting go of the Scripture; Scripture no longer has to be historically inerrant. And this violates a principle that later comes on down in the New Testament known as the incarnation. Let me show you one passage in the New Testament.

John 3:12, this is why… I’m trying to get across a mentality to you, it’s not something definite, it’s a mentality that permeates the Word of God. You can’t separate the doctrine and ideas from the history and the events, they’re inseparable. Here’s why; John 3:12, Jesus says to Nicodemus, “If I have told you earthly things,” those are things inside history that you can watch, you can measure, you can talk about, you can describe. “If I have told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things.” Now John 3:12 forces the Bible-believing Christian to hold to a unity of doctrine in history; he cannot separate the two. Yet every liberal clergyman does this today. The Christian ethic does not hold unless you have a literal Genesis. And that’s a hard way of putting it but it doesn’t seem that people get the point until I put it as hard as I possibly can and that’s as hard as I can make it, that if you do not subscribe to a literal Genesis you have no justification for loving anyone; in fact you have no justification for saying there are any such thing as people worth loving.

So doctrine and history go together; the two are in union. Now this is where the Christmas event comes in because in the Christmas event the doctrine, in the sense that it’s a person now, not just doctrine, person of God and history unite, and this is we have the incarnation, and Satan is always trying to destroy the incarnation. The spirit of the antichrist will not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. Why? Because the union between God’s person and history must be snapped, it must be destroyed and anytime you have a philosophic system, any time you have a clergyman, anytime you have just the lack of application in your life, basically there is the spirit of the antichrist that would divorce God from his own creation. An attack upon the incarnation or an attack upon the infallibility of Scripture is obviously satanically motivated, in every case; not necessarily does the person that does it means that but he’s being used at that point.

Back to Psalm 28, “Blessed be the LORD, because H has heard the voice of my supplications. [7] The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” Now why can David say that God is a shield? Notice, the first statement of verse 7 is a declaration about God’s character, but notice again the Biblical mentality. No statement is made about God’s character that hasn’t come to the person inside his experience. Why does David say “The LORD is my strength and my shield,” he gives you the answer, because “my heart trusted in Him, and I was helped,” that’s why. So David doesn’t separate the doctrine of God from this historical experience as a believer; the two are plugged together.

Then he says, as a result, “Therefore, my heart greatly rejoices, and with my song will I praise Him.” Now the last prepositional phrase, “with my song” hints about how the praise was conducted and explains 1 Samuel 1. Remember when Hannah received the answer to her prayer she came back with baby Samuel after 2 or 3 years apparently, she gave him to the high priest, but when she turned the baby over to the high priest she said a song and that was 1 Samuel 2:1-10 and it appears there, obviously it could have been that Hannah made it up then but I don’t think so; as I said when I taught that passage that 1 Samuel 2:1-10 was probably made up by Hannah over, maybe 2 or 3 years, ready for that time when she turned her baby over to the high priest. So when she presented the baby she said here’s my song. Now actually whether Hannah sang it or not we don’t know but this phrase, “with my song will I praise Him” suggests it was customary at that time, when God had answered a great prayer in your life, for you to come to bear witness to it by writing a song of praise and turning that song of praise over to the priests. Probably what eventually happened was that the priest chanted this song; maybe the person that gave this song to the priest chanted it, but whoever did the actual music, the music itself was a result of answered prayer in the believer’s life.

And so this little phrase, “with my song I will praise him” doesn’t mean he’s kind of humming this along in his life; it means that when he goes to the priest to thank God for his prayer he gives with his thanksgiving a song that he’s made up. It’s David’s way of praising God this way. It’s a very interesting concept of praise, and that is that these people would actually compose something creatively in their life and give it back to God. In a way it’s like the offering of the Firstfruits, that the man who produces his crop, the first production he makes he turns over to God. Well here, the first production of the answered prayer is turned back to God in the form of a written song. And so this is what that little song is that’s mentioned in verse 7.

Now verse 8, in verse 8 we have descriptive praise begin to flow. Here it’s more abstract than verse 7; see 7 was intimately connected with his personal history; now verse 8 extracts it further and says: “The LORD is their strength,” except in the Hebrew it’s “The Lord is his strength, and he is the saving strength of his anointed.” Now the word “anointed” is the word for Messiah and so therefore this word “anointed” has reference to the king. But it’s the king in the abstract sense; so therefore this would refer to the office of the king, and what has happened by the time you get to verse 8 is that out of David’s personal experience of thanking God for answered prayer in his life he deduces, because remember this is a special form of answered prayer, this is actually revelation and answered prayer, David deduces now I know something about how God is going to work with Messiah, with the anointed one, He will always be the strength and the saving strength of the Christ.

What does this mean as far as we’re concerned. This will balance your picture of Jesus Christ. Now in fundamental circles the tendency has been to fight the liberalism so hard that we lean heavily on the deity of Christ and this is good in one sense that we uphold the deity of Christ, but doctrine is very, very delicate and you can get off balance very, very easy. So in stressing the deity of Christ oftentimes the fundamentalist doesn’t fully recognize the humanity of Christ. And Jesus Christ becomes some sort of a superman, that just kind of clicks His fingers and something happens out there. That’s not the way Christ works because this phrase would say that Christ has to depend on the Father for His strength, even today… even today; even though Jesus Christ is glorified He is still Christ, is He not; He still functions in the office of the Christ, and doesn’t that mean that the Son, this moment in history, must depend upon His Father. Yes.

Turn to Hebrews 1:13, a quotation from one of the Old Testament Psalms applied to the ancient king; this quote applies it to Jesus Christ, and notice what Hebrews 1:13 says, “But which of the angels said He at any time, Sit on My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.” Now what’s the subject of that, the Father or the Son? The subject of the verb “make,” Father or Son? It’s the Father. Who’s “Thy?” The Son. What does that verse teach that Psalm 28 teaches? That even today Jesus Christ is subordinate to the Father when it comes to advancing the plan of history. Jesus Christ Himself in this hour is making intercession to whom on behalf of us, Romans 8:34? To the Father. So Jesus Christ in the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son has a certain, we have to be careful here, the Son has a certain subordination to the Father. And this means that when the body of Christ, which is the Church, the Church itself with its petitions, when you and I petition, when we have a prayer we pray to the Father.

This is why, by the way, you don’t pray to Jesus, prayer to Jesus is not authorized in the New Testament. Pray to the Father in the name of the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. Prayer to Jesus, I mean it’s not some great thing that’s going to go off, in the sense that God is going to close His ears but it’s a goofy way to pray, simply because it denies the Trinity. Praying to Jesus means that I do not need to have an advocate. See what happens if you pray… let’s set the Trinity up here in this prayer mode, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You pray to the Father because of the advocacy of the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. That’s the prayer team and that’s the way they fit together in prayer. But if you pray to the Son then who’s your advocate? Eventually what happens, prayer to Jesus and prayer to the Holy Spirit, ultimately, the theological necessity for an advocate forces itself upon the person and finally you wind up like many Roman Catholics with some sort of a Mariolatry or some of advocacy among the saints. You have to appeal to angel, saints or something to get your advocacy. So this is why prayer is directed to the Father through the advocacy of the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit and it may sound like an innocent mistake to just simply pray to Jesus but theologically the fallout is tremendous.

We have the sitting at Thy right hand, and the Father is making the Son’s body, so to speak, and since we’re part of the body, and when we pray to the Father, Christ is actually praying through us to the Father; we’re part of His body aren’t we, and so again when the members of the body of Christ petition to the Father, going through the Son of course, we again have a playing out in history of this subordination, that Christ is subordinate to the Father in this case. Now it’s not a subordination of essence, but it’s a subordination of economy.

Let’s turn back and look at the last verse of Psalm 28, verse 9. Verse 5-8 have dealt with the section of turning to the congregation in praise and narrating what God has done. One application before we get to verse 9 that we can apply to our Christians lives and that is: what is testimony, what is a testimony? Now there are many testimonies, a testimony can be a life, a testimony can be the lip, but when testimony is verbally given there ought to be a sequence inside that testimony so that when you give your testimony, it’s all right to talk about what God has done in your life; oftentimes I’ve been misrepresented as saying I’m against giving personal testimonies. No, I’m just against some of the goofy personal testimonies, that’s all, and I’m against these contests that everybody tries to out-testimony somebody else, and this is what usually gets started; somebody gives a good testimony and then we’ve got to compete, spiritual king of the mountain or something, find out who can come up with a better one. This is why we have to be careful.

But in a testimony there should be two parts, and if you just remember this it will keep you balanced when you give your testimony and you’ll really be giving a good testimony. And everybody ought to be concerned with this, whether you ever think of getting up before a group and giving a testimony is not the point; the point is if you are an ambassador for Christ you should have opportunities during your daily life on a person to person basis of giving your testimony. So don’t think well I’m not interested, I never get up and …[tape turns] …what do I mean by that. I mean you don’t start talking about what Jesus is until you’ve told people who Jesus is. You don’t start saying Jesus did this and Jesus did that and I’ve got Jesus jewelry and a Jesus sweatshirt, look at my sweatshirt, it’s got Jesus on it, etc. What about this kind of stuff? Well, that is not a testimony. We have to define Jesus as the historic person of the New Testament documents who fits in the flow of Old Testament history. Now you don’t have to use this vocabulary, use your own vocabulary, just get the point across, the Jesus Christ you’re talking about is the Jesus Christ who literally died, literally rose from the dead, literally lived under Caesar Augustus and others. And who literally fulfilled the prophesies of the Old Testament. You’ve got to connect Jesus with the Old Testament; you can’t preach a pocket testament Jesus; it doesn’t include the Old Testament. Impossible, because the word “Christ” is an Old Testament word.

So the first thing in any testimony is at least convey to your hearers that you are talking about history and facts; you’re not talking about religious truths in never-never land. You’re talking about something that is just as much a fact as any other commonly accepted historic fact. It’s that factual. All right, after you get that across, and you may have to spend about 25 out of 30 minutes just to get that across, simply because so many people are not prepared to receive that kind of a message; most people are prepared to receive a sweet little message about Jesus but they’re not prepared to hear a message about a historical Christ who got dirt under his fingernails.

The second thing to do in a testimony is then to relate this to your personal life, the individual things that have happened to you, and stress what individually has happened to you. It could consist of how you became a Christian, what are the unique details of how you became a Christian. Don’t just say I raised my hand, signed a card, dropped down the aisle or something, that’s not personal. Relate something that’s unique to you as a person so somebody catches the message that God is a personal God is dealing with you in a personal way. He doesn’t deal with you as a computer… you know what, I got punched into the eternal life machine. Now that’s what happens to a lot of Christian testimonies. Make it personal, describe some historic thing about you as a personal being so somebody can walk away and say well that’s how they became a Christian.

There are other things you can say, you can relate answered prayer in your life; that’s a good way of handling the problem because that forces your hearer to accept the fact that you accept the supernatural universe. And if you have laid the ground work in the first step of saying that we’re dealing with history and fact, and then you go on to say and that same Jesus Christ answered my prayer 25 minutes ago, what have you done? You’ve connected that history with your history, present time, and you’re taking the individual that you’re talking to and you’ve taken the concept of the supernatural and you’ve stuck it about a half inch in front of his eyeballs. And that’s what you want to do. So this is a testimony and how it is given. This is what David is doing; these songs were testimonies that were given to the temple. In principle you and I apply these Psalms by studying their content so we can present our testimonies.

Then verse 9 is the final thing that this king does. And this why we know he’s king at this point, one of the reasons why, besides the fact of the word “anointed.” “Save thy people, and bless thine inheritance; feed them also, and lift them up forever.” To whom is this addressed? The congregation or Jehovah? It’s obviously addressed to Jehovah; it’s an imperative, a series of imperatives. Verse 8 ends the last section, verse 9 begins and ends the final section of this psalm, “Save thy people,” “thy people” would be Israel, “bless Thine inheritance,” synonym, “feed them also and lift them up forever,” this is a prayer for eternal life but the most important thing about verse 9 is that it shows you the mentality of the king. Christ is subordinate to the Father and must ask the Father, but when Christ comes to the Father, what is it He asks? Verse 9. Do you want an example of how Christ does the same thing, how Christ fills the Messianic kingly office that David did.

Turn to John 17; John 17 is exactly what verse 9 is in Psalm 28; it’s the same mentality. In verse 9 of Psalm 28 the king prays for his people to God. And by the way, notice something else, David doesn’t say “feed my people Lord,” what does he say? “Feed your people.” See the people are always Jehovah’s people, never the human king’s people. Now in John 17 Jesus is going to make a little point here and in reading it, if you’re just one of these believers that reads your New Testament and don’t study the Old Testament you miss the point. But if you’ve got a little Old Testament background here Jesus is making quite a point in John 17 and if you’re schooled in thinking in terms of what Old Testament kings said, Lord “save Thy people,” these are Thy people.

What does Jesus say in John 17:10, “All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them.” That is a titanic claim; that separates Jesus, the Messiah, from the Old Testament king. No Old Testament king would ever have dared to say anything like verse 10. Jehovah, all Your things are My things; that would have been the height of blasphemy, it would be blasphemy for any Old Testament king to claim this, but when Christ claims verse 10 it’s tantamount to claiming He is God. Now this is why we have knuckle-headed critics who always say oh, the New Testament doesn’t have any evidence that Jesus claimed to be God. Of course it hasn’t if you haven’t looked at it properly. You have to read the New Testament the way New Testament people would have read it; that is in light of the Old Testament. And if you read the New Testament in light of the Old Testament the deity of Christ is on every page. And here’s a claim for Christ’s deity. They say oh, that isn’t claiming Christ’s deity, it doesn’t say He’s God, where does it say He’s God. It doesn’t, explicitly, but the implication is there because He is doing something that no Old Testament king would have done. Psalm 28 gives you the norm for an Old Testament king; John 17 compared with the other Psalms will show you how Christ was the same and how He was different.

Most of you have read John 17 before; what would be some things in this chapter that you think are parallel to David’s Old Testament role as a king? Can you think of anything that pictures the way the Old Testament king would have operated. I’m looking for similarities, not contrasts. I said verse 10 is a contrast, the Old Testament kings would never have said verse 10, but there are also things in John 17 that an Old Testament king would have said. What are some of those things. [someone says something] Okay, I pray for them. Notice what Christ is doing, He is our king and He prays us as David prayed for His nation. Notice back further, verse 6, think of the ownership situation. I said verse 10 where Christ is claiming co-ownership with the Father, but very, very delicately, very gently, and you have to read carefully in verse 6, comparing with verse 10. In verse 10 you have co-ownership between the Father and the Son together but who actually is superior in the ownership according to verse 6. Do you see how the Trinity is preserved, the order there. “I have manifested Your name unto the men whom You gave Me out of the world,” so the Father is in the process of giving believers to the Son. “Thine they were, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Thy word.” See how Christ can see to this.

Now that content in verse 6 is how Christ thinks of you if you’re a Christian. Christ is giving thanks to the Father for you because the Father has given you to Christ. Think of our chart that we draw on positional truth so often here. What does the Father do, one of the first things the Father does? What’s our position in Christ. [someone answers He calls] Okay, He calls, what’s He do before that? Foreknows and predestinates. Doesn’t ever strike you as interesting that the New Testament never says Christ foreknows or predestines; now He does in the sense of His deity, He’s omniscient, but isn’t it interesting that these particular functions are ascribed to the First Person of the Trinity, the Father, He foreknows, He predestinates, and then He calls us. And the calling is what Christ is talking about in verse 6. The calling is when the Father turns us over to the Son and says now I want You to take care of this one also, I want You to take care of this one, I want You to take care of this one. In other words, this is a tremendous thing to think about, but there’s a turning over inside the flow of history between the First and the Second Persons of the Godhead in that in the flow of history the Father is calling out, come, come, come, come, come, come unto My Son. And then a person believes in Christ and it’s as though the Father says okay, now Christ, now My Son, here are some more of Your brethren, and I’m calling them out of the world to You.

Now this is just another one those little touches that should make the Christian life very, very highly personal to you, that you individually and personally are a gift from one member of the Trinity to the other. You’re a present, gift-wrapped, to the Son from the Father. He must be disappointed when He opens some of the gifts but…. In John 17 further, in verse 13, a very interesting thing. Remember this is the king now, praying for His people. “Now I come to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” Suppose we re-read verse 13 and crossed out a certain phrase; let’s re-read verse 13. “Now I come to Thee; and these things I speak, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” Don’t you see that very important phrase, “I speak these things in the world,” so it will be recorded as part of history and because that prayer went down in history it’s the basis of this prayer that we can have joy in the Christian life. All the great things that come to us in the Christian life come out of the Father’s answer to this prayer for us. This is a historic prayer uttered in the Garden at a certain time.

Verse 15, “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one,” that’s from Satan. [16] “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. [17] Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy Word is truth.” Verse 17 is a particular petition that may be giving you problems because the Son has asked the Father to sanctify each one of us and that’s where the hurt comes. And it’s that process of sanctification that kind of makes for sad moments in the Christian life. But don’t worry about it, that was also an answer to prayer, verse 17. If you could erase verse 17 you might be happier in the short run. [18] “As Thou hast sent me into the world, even so also I have sent them into the world. [19] And for their sakes I sanctify Myself that they also may be sanctified through the truth.”

And then verse 20, a tremendous petition applies to us, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall believe on Me through their word,” that’s the historic testimony passed from generation to generation throughout the Church Age and shows you how do we become Christians? Because we went into our closet and meditated and saw lights. Or because we came in contact with the historical records written by the people who were the first believers in the Church Age. It’s obviously the latter and this is why in 1 John 1 you cannot have fellowship with Jesus Christ unless you have fellowship with the apostles in their word. It is always, we are plugged into Christ at the point of the Bible, nowhere else. And this is what it means; they are going to hear and not in every generation from heaven like this generation has heard; these people in the future are going to hear but they’re going to hear through the word of the first believers; it’s going to go this way, not this way. So there are a lot of things in John 17, we could spend a long time exegeting but I just want to summarize John 17 by comparing it with Psalm 28, which is the last individual lament Psalm.

Now to finish our time tonight, since this is the last of the section of the individual lament Psalms I’d like to review with you certain principles that we’ve observed that we might apply in our Christian life from this whole category of individual lament Psalms. And I’d like a little discussion on this. Would some of you like to suggest some principles that you’ve noticed as we’ve gone through these individual lament Psalms. We’ve gone through Psalm 6, Psalm 12, Psalm 13, Psalm 22, Psalm 26 and Psalm 28. What are some principles that strike you. [someone says something] Okay, the “Jew-ing” God principle; now for those of you who may be shocked by the language, nothing evil is intended here, it’s just an expression to get over the way the psalmist prayed to God. They went to God with the expectancy that God owed them an answer. How’s that for some cockiness in prayer, but this is the way the psalmist did.

Let me just review for you, turn back to the Psalms, let’s look at some of those verses just to tie this principle together sharply in our minds from the Psalms that we’ve reviewed. Turn to Psalm 6, the first Psalm that we covered. Notice in Psalm 6 how the Psalmist kind of yanked on God. Verses 4-5, “Return, O LORD, deliver my soul; oh, save me for Thy mercies’ sake. [5] For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in the grave who shall give Thee thanks?” In other words God should answer his prayer because if he dies he will not have any more opportunity to bear witness to God in the stream of history. So what he’s doing in effect is saying okay God, You want to let me die, go ahead, You’re going to lose a testimony. Now obviously it wasn’t said with that kind of a ring to it, I just said it that way to get the point across better. But that is the content, isn’t it? Isn’t verses 4-5 saying that God, if You don’t answer this prayer You’re going to be the loser. Now maybe this mentality is so far out to what you’re used to hearing on prayer that it takes you a few days and weeks to get adjusted to it.

Let’s look at Psalm 12:1, “Help, LORD; for the godly man ceases,” or has ceased, “for the faithful have failed from among the children of men.” The idea here is that if God doesn’t answer the whole nation is going to go down; the nation that He promised to uphold, so He’s got to answer the prayer. In Psalm 13:3-4, what does he pray? “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; [4] Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.” Can anyone think of how you might apply verse 4 very specifically in the Christian life? Now verse 4 is given in the Old Testament economy; how is a New Testament believer could you bring that over and almost literally say the same thing in your prayer life. Who would correspond to the enemy? Satan. And so “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; lighten mine eyes lest Satan say I have prevailed against him.” Now that’s the right of every believer to pray that kind of a prayer, because if we are being clobbered by Satan and God allows us to be clobbered all the down to the end of the line, then obviously what happens to predestination, election, and so on, the idea of the glorified instruments? The believer can fall back onto this.

Look in Psalm 22:3, in verses 1-2 the psalmist wonders why God doesn’t answer prayer, and he laments it, and then verse 3, “But Thou art holy,” [4] “Our fathers trusted in Thee, they trusted, and You delivered them.” In other words, again he appeals back to the character of God. He says God, you’re going to deny Your character if You don’t answer my prayer; You’re going to deny Your character, which was proved in past generations.

Psalm 26:6-8, “I wash mine hands in innocence; so will I compass Thine altar, O LORD, [7] That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all Thy wondrous works. [8] LORD, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honor dwells.” His point is that the enemy don’t, the enemy doesn’t do this. All right, if that’s the case, then obviously God owes him an answer so to speak.

Is there any question about this principle; do you see what the palmist is doing here, this business of Jew-ing God, it is that they are, so to speak, taking advantage of the contractual arrangement between God and the believer and they’re falling back on the contract. Now your contract with the Father is established in the pages of the New Testament; that’s why it behooves every one of you as a believer to know the terms of the contract. Your personal relationship with God is not arbitrary, it’s carefully controlled with subjects and predicates, and propositionally written revelation and you have the right to hold God to the contract. And you ought to, when you make your prayer request, see if you can hunt down a verse; it may take you five or ten extra minutes to design a prayer request, but have you ever thought of designing a prayer request before you shoot it off, instead of promiscuously saying oh God, help me. How about thinking through now, why should God help me? Just think sometimes this mental image will help. If you think what it would be like of walking into an office and having Christ seated behind the desk, think of that kind of a situation. How would you approach Him? I’m not trying to overly formalize it but I’m trying to show you that if He were behind the desk and you were to walk up to Him you would think a little bit before you opened your mouth, in that kind of a situation. Well, it’s the same thing in prayer, why should prayer be any different than that.

Another principle, does anybody else have another principle that particularly struck them as we’ve gone through these individual lament Psalms. [someone says something] Okay, the extreme personal-ness of God. Go back to Psalm 6:1. Does anybody know the technical word for this, this extreme personal nature of God that’s shown in the Old Testament. It usually bears the brunt of many liberal critic’s attacks. Anthropomorphism, sometimes anthropopathisms stressing the emotion, but the idea is that anthropomorphism is the idea that God in the Bible appears too much like a man, so it’s primitive revelation and the less human He appears and the more abstract the more like the ancient Greeks, for example, the more advanced. So certain scholars have gone to the Old Testament and have reordered the text based on the anthropomorphic passages which they claim are old and primitive and the non-anthropomorphic passages which they elate. Why does God appear as anthropomorphic? What’s the answer to the critic at this point? A very simple answer. [someone says something] Right, why shouldn’t He appear anthropomorphic, doesn’t the Bible say in the first chapter we’re made in His image. How else is God going to appear except anthropomorphically.

By the way, do any of you know enough about ancient history to know what is so utterly unique about the anthropomorphisms of the Bible? What is it that is true about the anthropomorphisms and the way God appears in the Bible that is not true of any other civilization on the face of this earth? Other civilizations had anthropomorphic deities, but what was also true of the same anthropomorphic deities? They appeared as what? [someone says something] right, the gods of the ancient religions appear in animal forms. Where in the Bible does God appear in an animal form? He never does. So you see you’ve got a tremendous titanic difference between the Bible and the ancient cultures. So if this is the case, we have God appearing uniquely in anthropomorphic form whereas in the Egyptians, the Assyrians and in other places in other religions he always appears animalistically. This also shows the testimony of the high order that man stands in the Bible.

But in particular in Psalm 6:1 the extreme after effect of this: “O LORD, rebuke me not in Thine anger; neither chasten me in Your hot displeasure.” In other words, God reacts, He doesn’t… we can say oh yeah, I believe in God as a personal God but have you ever thought of it this way, that God gets hacked off at you. And He can react. Now in one way you say well isn’t that horrible; and in another way oh no, because it means that you can do something so significant that you can hack off the person who created and sustains the universe. That is saying something tremendous.

Some other verses on this, Psalm 12:5, remember how we exegeted Psalm 12 and we said the Psalm flowed and kept on flowing and then verse 5, suddenly bam, verse 5 crashed into the middle of this Psalm and then verse 6 flowed on, you have the answer to God. “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise, saith the LORD; I will set him in safety from him who…” and so on. The idea is that God is getting up off the scene, He’s doing something, He’s reacting in response to the psalmist’s prayer. The first four verses are the prayer, verse 5 is God’s reaction, personal reaction.

Psalm 13:3-4, “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; lighten mine eyes,” and it goes on this way. Psalm 13 doesn’t the extreme [can’t understand word] except you might say that in verse 1 and 1 you’d have some hint of it, “How long will You forget me, O LORD? Forever? How long will You hide Thy face from me?” the idea is that God has turned His back. He’s prayed and nothing seems to happen and it’s just like God has turned His back and He’s not looking. God has reacted; God has reacted to this person.

Then Psalm 22:24, “For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has He hid His face from us; but when he cried unto Him, He heard,” personal reaction. Psalm 28:1, “Unto Thee will I cry, O LORD, my rock; be not silent to me, lest, if Thou be silent to me, I become like them who go down into the pit.” And then verse 6, “Blessed be the LORD, because He heard the voice of my supplication.”

So you’ve got extreme personal content to God’s character. Why is this so important. I think we can do well to carry out away from this series that we’ve done on the individual lament Psalms, if we get nothing out of it to get this personal character of God thing, because in this way it will keep your Christian life from getting automatic; it will keep your Christian life from getting too automatic and mechanistic. If you wake up in the morning with the idea, I wonder what’s on God’s mind about me today, you see, in other words it’s something personal. I wonder how God thought about what I did. Again you see there’s something dynamic, ever changing, always moving.

Shall we bow in prayer and next week we’ll deal with some of the praise Psalms.